this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2023
92 points (100.0% liked)

Privacy Guides

16865 readers
72 users here now

In the digital age, protecting your personal information might seem like an impossible task. We’re here to help.

This is a community for sharing news about privacy, posting information about cool privacy tools and services, and getting advice about your privacy journey.


You can subscribe to this community from any Kbin or Lemmy instance:

Learn more...


Check out our website at privacyguides.org before asking your questions here. We've tried answering the common questions and recommendations there!

Want to get involved? The website is open-source on GitHub, and your help would be appreciated!


This community is the "official" Privacy Guides community on Lemmy, which can be verified here. Other "Privacy Guides" communities on other Lemmy servers are not moderated by this team or associated with the website.


Moderation Rules:

  1. We prefer posting about open-source software whenever possible.
  2. This is not the place for self-promotion if you are not listed on privacyguides.org. If you want to be listed, make a suggestion on our forum first.
  3. No soliciting engagement: Don't ask for upvotes, follows, etc.
  4. Surveys, Fundraising, and Petitions must be pre-approved by the mod team.
  5. Be civil, no violence, hate speech. Assume people here are posting in good faith.
  6. Don't repost topics which have already been covered here.
  7. News posts must be related to privacy and security, and your post title must match the article headline exactly. Do not editorialize titles, you can post your opinions in the post body or a comment.
  8. Memes/images/video posts that could be summarized as text explanations should not be posted. Infographics and conference talks from reputable sources are acceptable.
  9. No help vampires: This is not a tech support subreddit, don't abuse our community's willingness to help. Questions related to privacy, security or privacy/security related software and their configurations are acceptable.
  10. No misinformation: Extraordinary claims must be matched with evidence.
  11. Do not post about VPNs or cryptocurrencies which are not listed on privacyguides.org. See Rule 2 for info on adding new recommendations to the website.
  12. General guides or software lists are not permitted. Original sources and research about specific topics are allowed as long as they are high quality and factual. We are not providing a platform for poorly-vetted, out-of-date or conflicting recommendations.

Additional Resources:

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Spotify is facing a privacy controversy as users allege that their private playlists were made public without their consent. This situation, similar to a previous issue, has raised concerns about an ongoing privacy problem. Users took to Twitter and Spotify's community forums to report the unexpected change, with one user calling it an "absolutely unacceptable privacy violation."

top 18 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There's a fundamental problem in modern people mindset: too much trust that everything will stay as it is now forever.

The only valid internet rule is: everything one puts on the internet can become publicly available and linked to one's identity (name and surname) at any point in the future

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It’s a tragedy that this mindset has become much less common over the past 10 years

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

The flipside of the same coin is that few people expect the sites and apps we use to respect our privacy at all anymore.

For example, pre-9/11 Google's whole schtick was that they would never share or sell our data. At the time, a lot (though not enough) of people were outraged by their backtracking on this. Now, corporations have learned that we're all numb to this. I've even had people lecture me about not "supporting a site" by viewing ads or sharing my real data on my account.

I've been guilty of this too, because we become numb to it. I've tried to switch to more privacy-respecting options, but I've still gotta use google services at work, still have too many friends on discord just to leave, etc.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why is it so hard to spend at least a few minutes on how a change will impact privacy before implementing the change to millions of paying customers and without even informing them.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Because, in general, the dev and the code reviewer(s) can’t accurately predict the impact of the changes. It’s a consequence of having a massive and complex code base. Now, best practices say that they should have automation in place that runs before the pull request can be approved, that tests against regression and unintended consequences. But, far too often, these things are deprioritised by management because of the “ship it now, we’ll fix it later” mindset.

To put it more succinctly, infinite profit growth is the reason everything is shit.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So you're telling me capitalism causes things to be shit? Who woulda thunk it!!!?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I’m shocked! Shocked, I tell you!!!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Are there any good streaming alternatives with privacy and consumer data rights in mind?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Maybe Apple Music. Thats what I use. If you don't trust Apple you can just download music from the Internet to listen locally.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Jellyfin has an excellent music library mode.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

The playlists aren't actually public they just added a third, ambiguous category with some updates they made: "Recently Spotify has made some changes to playlist Privacy adding and extra level of privacy control. So all playlists that were previously Private are now Not added to profile, as the wording goes. This is why you see the option to Make Private on every playlist. Which means that your playlists were not made Public, they just appear to be categorized differently, so those playlists are still not visible for anyone who views your profile on any platform."

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Someone explain why this is a big deal. I feel like we have massive privacy concerns all over the place and this is just...not one of them.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

How is this not a privacy concern? Data deemed private has become public. I agree music playlists are not as sensitive as health, banking or political associations for example but it is still of concern. Where would you draw the line between sensitive and not? Being privacy centric when handling personal data should be a core principle and any company breaching this principle should be exposed.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Btw why doesn't Spotify have a feature for an ai to create genre playlists (or any mood playlists you want) from your liked songs? If you have thousands of songs it's impractical to trawl through them creating playlists

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Uhm, it kinda does? On the Home page you have Daily mixes, which are pretty well grouped, and some other playlists. Although those seem to be based on your history rather than liked songs, which I personally prefer anyway.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I'm pissed. I just want to pay them money and use their service and now they blindside me. I spend a lot of time and effort on my playlists and like my privacy. Why can't we have nice things anymore? I guess I will need to go back to old school mp3s and go offline again.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

The article website is quite curious about privacy. Like you can't refuse legitimate interest or allows ads publishers to link it to others device you could use...